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Dev Blog 27
Battlestar Galactica Online - Development Blog 27 - "The Cylons Were Created by Man" 20 June 2015 Hey pilots, It’s time to give you an update from the server merge front. This time it’s getting concrete! For the first time, all colonies from a continent can unite on a single server. Human or Cylon? Who will win this fight? Today’s blog: *They evolved… *They rebelled… *There are many copies *And they have a plan They evolved... The journey to the merge, starting at an outdated hardware setup and old deployment processes, has been packed with obstacles and was quite challenging and exhausting for both the players and for the development team. We are therefore quite proud to be the first project at BP to spearhead this procedure. To give you some additional information: The new hardware setup for the EU servers was finished two weeks ago, and the first migration tests have been executed. Contrary to the first predictions, the migration scripts are now much faster: they take only a few hours instead of several days. We’re still optimizing the scripts, and will be able to give you a more precise timeline once the merge takes place. To address any concerns about lost data: you can’t lose anything during the merge. Your account is either fully migrated or, if any errors occur, not at all. As we will be closely tracking the procedure, any errors can be solved manually, but we are confident that thanks to our intensive testing and optimization, no significant errors should occur. In the meantime, I.T. is also finishing the US hardware setup. With the same conditions as the EU hardware, the newest software has been installed and the network connection resiliency has been improved. Right now, we are renewing the deployment processes for future updates, which will take approximately till the end of next week. And there you go! The new website and game entry will also be finished within the next week, so internal and external tests will start soon afterwards. Beta tests for the new sectors are planned in about 2 weeks; detailed information will be shared with all beta testers via mail. Internal tests for the other elements are either already in progress or will start soon. These will be followed by localization and polishing processes until the merge takes place. Based on this, current estimations (including a small buffer for solving issues that might occur along the way) point to a planned release during calendar week 29. They rebelled... We recently conducted a social media campaign to find names for our new sectors. The merge will accompany the launch of 3 new sectors. Two of them have now been named by the community: Exomera and Carillon. Thanks for your participation, and congratulations to the winners of the contest! Another contest in which you can send in your screenshots to be part of the new website is ending on June 22nd. You may ask what happened to the third sector, but before we reveal that, we want to give you some details about the new sectors. Currently, they are supposed to be sized at 40.000m*40.000m, which is 4 to 6 times as big as existing sectors. Some new decoration elements will fill that space using all three dimensions. Overall, we are trying to achieve a completely new feeling of density and atmosphere in space. Those new sectors won’t launch with big new features, but we want to make use of already existing elements and improve the way they are used. So we’re looking at stronger, more diversified NPCs who make clever use of buffs and debuffs and are more heavily armored or armed. All of this already exists, and we just need to make use of it. But that’s not all – during the live tests, we’ll check out where we should set the limitations in terms of users who can simultaneously access those sectors, to potentially allow for much bigger fleet fights than ever before. We hope that you’ll enjoy those new sectors and experience PvP on a new scale. Beta testers on the test servers will also find that Scar and Kat are already eagerly waiting for them in the new sectors – just as eagerly as we await their feedback. Let’s return to the topic of sector names. In October of last year, I received a message from one of our moderators. She basically informed me of a tragic incident within the BSGO community. I’ll simply quote the words I left in the forums back then: “Joshua, known as Toah14, has passed away at the age of 17. That’s far too young, and it’s a stark reminder of how short life can be. We should all use this time to surround ourselves with friends and loved ones. I’m certain that many of you can count yourselves among Joshua’s circle. A ray of light in this tragic situation is the outpouring of respect – demonstrated here on the boards and elsewhere – which shows that Toah wasn’t merely a gamer; he was part of an amazing community and I’m sure he won’t be forgotten. Keep his name in honor.” And that’s what we are going to do now. I made a promise back then, and am keeping it by naming the third sector “14 Toah”. It will be settled close to the Cylon area, and will be packed with Nidhogg and Fenrir NPCs, as those were always his favorite ships. This sector will also be devoted to all the other pilots, family, friends, and loved ones we have lost upon our journey. Keep them in honor and take care of those who remain with us. Show them that you appreciate that they want to share their life with you. Time and love are the most worthy things we can spend on others! There are many copies Back to the merge - with R51, Number Six will be replaced by a new copy. Her model and texture have been tweaked in order to improve her appearance. This update was supposed to happen much earlier, but it took a while and several iterations in order to get the changes approved by Universal. And they have a plan We’ve already given you an update on the overall plan in the latest blog. This time, we want to focus on the dependencies directly related to the merge. Current instances suffer from really specific issues that can’t be solved individually, as all instances use the same configuration files. For example, while especially higher populated servers were afraid of not having enough Tylium after the economy redesign, the stocks on low-populated servers were actually growing. With only two instances, we’ll be able to build specific solutions for their needs. From a population balance point of view, there are also big differences as compared to having many instances. Due to the fact that we need more Cylons overall, we also retained the bonus for joining up with them on every server, including those which currently have a higher capacity on the Cylon side. Last but not least, we’re working on a counterpart for the Capital class by implementing an additional set of items for the less frequently used Escort Interceptor class. Most of these steps won’t be part of the merge, but rather will follow in improvement releases in the weeks after the merge, as we first need to monitor the overall results of the merge itself. In order to better promote BSGO, during the next month our internal trailer team will be working on a new trailer that can be used for the new website, but also for partner promotion and several other campaigns. I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog update and I look forward to chatting with you again soon. I won’t have as much time for the forums in the near future, but I tend to pop up on some of the live servers with my dev account (as I have already been doing in the last three weeks), which will also be made easier by having only two servers. Save the date – CW29 – the Merge of BSGO! Thanks for your patience and continued support of BSGO, Tobias_BP Category:Developer Blogs